How to avoid predatory open access publishers

Adopting a safe publication strategy

Damien Belvèze

Université de Rennes

2024-12-04

Data management support for researchers
training sessions (data management, identifiers, reproducibility)
Data management plans
Data curation on ‘Recherche Data Gouv’ repository

1. predators and imposters

Elsevier has built up a war chest with $1.17 billion in net revenues, representing a 38% increase in sales. Researchers depend on these publishing compagnies for the quality assessment of their work. as a raw material, they yield for nothing the product of their public funded research, with which thoes compagnies will make extravagant profits by siphoning off university libraries’ finances. Or they will require research teams to pay 2 or 3 thousand dollars for so-called article processing charges in order to make their publication open access in their journals. In most of the cases, big publishing companies will make profit from both publication costs and subscriptions sold at a premium to libraries ( hybrid journals)

Elsevier, Springer, Nature, all predate public money by forcing scholars and their institutions to pay massive amounts of money to publish their papers, while the real added value, peer review process is massively done by researchers for free. They are predators, but not impersonators : in majority the papers that are submitted to these stakeholders are reviewed according to scientific standards.

2. The definition challenge

a light definition

Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices

a perversion of the Gold Road open Access

Figure 3

The DOAJ specifies wether APC for a given journal will be paid, and the amount of this APC

Rise of APC model = rise of predatory open access publishers

Figure 4

agressive spamming

Due to the rich knowledge shown in your previous publіcatіоn [title]
Impressed a lot by your artiсlе [title]
Since your рaреr [title] has left a deep impression on us
We are delighted to notice that your puЬliѕhed рарer [title] has brought wide attention

non-transparent peer review

POAP mimick existing journals and metrics

false indexation in bibliographic databases: POAP mimick the standard metrics and use misleading metrics

journal hijacking

the term was forged in 2012 by an iranian researcher iranien Mehrdad Jalalian[³]

usurpation of the graphic identity of a reputable journal by a journal that wants to attract either readers or authors (as in the case of Predatory open access publishers)

this does not happen only to academic journals but also to media outlets as well (see ABC news, which impersonate the brand and mimicks ABC, the famous American News media’s graphical identity.

in case this quiz would not work in the presentation, you may play it online

Why some researchers consciously publish their results in predatory journals

Young Global South researchers think they are not enough experienced or equiped to publish in traditional journals (⁴)
Predatory open access publishers publish whatever you submit, so they make it possible to publish negative data
APC are far cheaper than in traditional journals
In some countries, PhD students need to publish their paper before their defense (race against the clock)
The quantity of publications is still too often considered at the expense of their quality (publish or perish)

Why it is still a bad idea

a publication in a predatory open access journal can be considered as a spot in your career
you may have real difficulties to recover rights on your submitted paper (republication)
the public money you gave to these scam journals should have been spent in a rigorous peer reviewing process
predatory open access publishers raise the level of distrust towards science among the public

considering this, a lot of universities, when they can prove that a publication was consciously made in a predatory journal impose sanctions against the researchers who made the publication.

4. The grey zone

the publication quality spectrum

Figure 6

4. The compass to publish

figures

figure	source et crédits
Figure 2	Research Professional News

software used for this presentation

Most part of the software used for this presentation are open source “libre” software (thank you Richard M. Stallman)

Quarto 1.3.450
VScode 1.8.0
Rstudio
H5p
Digitale’s H5P editor (logiquiz) and board (digiboard)

Références

Grudniewicz, A. et al. Predatory journals: No definition, no defence. Nature 576, 210–212 (2019).

Delgado, A. Fraudulent and false metric indexes. A scam for publishers and authors. https://www.revistacomunicar.com/wp/school-of-authors/fraudulent-and-false-metric-indexes-a-scam-for-publishers-and-authors/.

Abalkina, A. Predatory vs hijacked journals: A commentary to “A ‘Trojan horse’ in the reference lists: Citations to a hijacked journal in SSCI-indexed marketing journals.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 102798 (2023) doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2023.102798.

Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Pergola, L. & Castaneda, H. Profiles, motives and experiences of authors publishing in predatory journals: OMICS as a case study. (2023).